Saturday, May 18, 2013

May?

And come to that, suggested?

Whoever writes the blurbs for the NYT's front page ought to sack up. How about saying what the article really says; e.g., Good writing need not be constrained by dictionary definitions?

The article would be better with some more examples, but it does offer something rare, to you, a decent person with your head on straight: the opportunity to agree with someone who writes for The Weekly Standard.

3 comments:

Eponym said...

That ( http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/the-role-of-a-dictionary/?hp ) is, IMHO, some of the best writing about writing I've ever read. It just kicks the knees out from under the chiseled-in-stone idea of language that one often encounters from a selection of tightly constricted, often humorless pedants whose last line of defense (and often first...) is to pick at whatever peculiarities someone has chosen to include in a particular argument. And... than that, it really gets to the heart of one aspect of what a language really is.

Substance McGravitas said...

Good writing can break rules.

bjkeefe said...

Almost by definition.

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